


Goose on the Loose

by newdog14



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Fluff, Hijinks & Shenanigans, Humor, James Potter's Genius Ideas, M/M, MWPP, Marauders Era (Harry Potter), Marauders Friendship (Harry Potter), Soulmate-Identifying Geese, Swearing, magical mishaps, wolfstar
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-05
Updated: 2020-09-05
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:13:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26308375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/newdog14/pseuds/newdog14
Summary: It began with James bursting into the dormitory to announce that he’d had the most brilliant idea, and really, that should have been all Remus needed to hear to know that something completely ridiculous and absolutely inconvenient was about to happen.
Relationships: Sirius Black/Remus Lupin
Comments: 12
Kudos: 248





	Goose on the Loose

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nottesilhouette](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nottesilhouette/gifts).



> Shout out to nottesilhouette for inspiring and encouraging this story, and for ensuring that my comma usage didn't get too far away from what could be considered grammatically acceptable. I hope that you all enjoy these goose based shenanigans!

It began with James bursting into the dormitory to announce that he’d had the most brilliant idea, and really, that should have been all Remus needed to hear to know that something completely ridiculous and absolutely inconvenient was about to happen, but even he could not have guessed just how much chaos would be enacted by James’ most recent plan for wooing one Lily Evans.

Perhaps the disaster could have been avoided, if Remus had been decent enough with potions to help, or if he hadn’t been too preoccupied with a two foot essay for Arithmancy to oversee the scheming, or if he had put more effort into explaining to James that Lily was never going to swoon over one of his pranks, no matter how clever or complicated it might be. As it was, however, Remus was barred from recreational potion making, and he had fallen behind on homework during the last moon, and it was nearly impossible to explain anything to James when Lily was involved.

So the plan commenced without him, and Remus was caught just as unawares as the rest of the school had been on that fateful Wednesday morning when peace and quiet became a concept that Hogwarts students could henceforth only  _ dream  _ of experiencing again

~*~*~*~*~

Remus has never been a morning person, and so he doesn’t quite notice that James is absent from breakfast that morning until his friend drops into his seat across the table with a truly suspicious grin on his face.

“Morning, lads!” he says with entirely too much enthusiasm. He lowers his voice and leans closer as he continues. “I got everything sorted with the house-elves, so things should be kicking off any minute now.”

Remus sighs, long resigned to the antics of his friends, and takes a long sip of his tea before asking, “And what exactly are  _ things _ , Prongs?”

James gives him an affronted look. “Getting Evans to fall for me, haven’t you listened to me at all?”

“About Evans? I think we all try not to,” Sirius said from Remus’ right, deftly dodging the bacon that James threw his way.

“Oh, shove off, Padfoot,” James says, rolling his eyes before looking pointedly at Remus. “I got the soul match potion figured out, finally. It was hell to brew, but I’m certain I’ve done it right this time.”

“What’d you put it in?” Peter asked, suddenly eyeing his breakfast warily.

“It’s in all the drinks,” James said, pouring himself a coffee and taking a sip. Remus eyes his tea with betrayal, and Sirius pushes his own half-drunk coffee away from himself. James rolls his eyes again. “Careful, you two, or I might start to think that you don’t have any confidence in my potioneering skills.”

“To clarify, this is the potion that  _ blew up _ the last two times you brewed it, correct?” Sirius said, a hint of a smirk on his face.

“No, it blew up the  _ first _ two times I brewed it. The last two attempts melted a cauldron and turned to sludge, respectively,” James said. “But I sorted out where I’d been going wrong and it’s going to work this time, any moment now.”

Remus was growing increasingly concerned about the possible consequences he might suffer through if James had done it wrong, but he was slightly  _ more  _ concerned about what exactly was going to happen if his friend had actually gotten things  _ right _ . “While that’s hardly reassuring, you still haven’t told me what this potion will actually  _ do _ .”

“It’s a potion for uniting soulmates,” James said. “You drink it and then a guide appears to lead you to your soulmate. I was originally just going to drink it myself, but Wormtail said Lily might not buy it if only I had one, so I decided to give it to everyone. That’s why brewing got so complicated; I had to quadruple the recipe.” 

Remus glared at Peter, who for his part looked rather stricken that he’d unintentionally led James to possibly poison the entire school. Seeing as he was clearly aware of how ashamed he ought to be, Remus returned his attention to James. “Now when you say ‘a guide’, do you mean like a spirit or a string or...?” James looked away a bit sheepishly, and Remus had a sudden sinking feeling.

“Well, the book didn’t really say, exactly,” James said. “I kind of got the feeling that it varied based on whoever brewed it, but all I know for certain is that the guide will stick around until both soulmates have accepted each other into their hearts, so there’s really no way it can fail to get me a date with Evans.”

“And what about the rest of us who’ve drunk this shit?” Sirius asked, just as Remus snapped, “And what the hell makes you so sure  _ you’re  _ her soulmate?” 

“Oh, quit your whining,” James said, successfully ignoring both questions. “I know what I’m doing, nothing could go wrong.”

That, of course, was the exact moment at which the first goose appeared out of thin air, gracelessly landing on the table before Frank Longbottom and knocking over a pitcher of milk. The goose honked loudly, and students across the hall fell silent as they watched Frank try to get the bird off the table. Just as suddenly, more geese began appearing across the hall, all honking and thrashing and biting anyone who attempted to remove them.

Sirius burst out laughing as a Hufflepuff fifth year lost his wand to one of the obnoxious birds, which had promptly started running away down the table, knocking over goblets and pitchers and anything else that happened to have been left in its path. His laughter died when a goose appeared in front of  _ him _ , taking a seat on Sirius’ breakfast and biting at his hair. “Hey!”

James looked torn between gleeful and horrified, ultimately settling for horror when Lily shrieked from down the table, her own goose having knocked a coffee mug over in her lap. “Potter! I don’t know how, but this is your fault!”

“Well, that’s hardly a fair accusation!” James shouted back.

Remus was about to argue that it was, in fact, the most fair accusation ever made, seeing as it was wholly correct and accurate, but he was stopped by the appearance of his own goose, which landed on his left shoulder and knocked him directly into Sirius. James wasn’t spared either, however, as his own goose appeared and swiftly bit him on the ear. Peter watched all of this with a quiet sort of horror, as he remained the only one of his friends who  _ wasn’t _ currently being attacked by a goose.

The Great Hall had devolved into utter chaos, as students shouted spells or simply shouted in pain, and the geese honked loudly, and McGonagall was shouting something but Remus couldn’t hear her because the goose on his shoulder had forced his head into Sirius’ lap and he was going to  _ murder _ James Potter for starting all of this.

“Depulso!” Dumbledore’s voice boomed out across the hall, and all at once the geese vanished, and Remus sagged in relief.

“You okay, Moony?” Sirius asked, his voice low as Dumbledore announced that morning classes would be cancelled so that those who were injured could be treated.

“I’m okay,” Remus answered, forcing himself up and out of Sirius’ personal space, steadfastly refusing to acknowledge how much he missed the closeness once it was gone. Sirius smiled and plucked a feather from Remus’ hair as he sat up. “What about you?”

“I’ll live,” Sirius said, shrugging. Then he looked towards James with a glare. “But if that goose fucked up my hair, Prongs may not.”

James rolled his eyes, looking remarkably unconcerned given the amount of blood on the napkin he was holding up to his ear. “Your hair is fine, Padfoot. No need to be making threats.”

“Oh, Prongs living through this was never going to happen,” Remus said darkly. “I intend to make sure of it.”

“Et tu, Moony?” James asked, a look of betrayal on his face. He turned to Peter instead. “You won’t let them murder me over an honest mistake, would you, Wormy?”

Peter looked worriedly between his friends. “Er, why don’t we get you to the Hospital Wing, Prongs?”

“Potter!” McGonagall was shouting, but it seemed she hadn’t spotted him yet.

“Brilliant idea, Wormy, let’s go!” James said, darting behind his fellow students as he fled the hall, Peter rushing after him. Remus rubbed his temples, certain that he felt a headache coming on.

“Black! Lupin!” McGonagall shouted, sweeping toward them with a furious look on her face. 

“Oh, come on, Professor, we didn’t even do anything this time!” Sirius protested. Unfortunately, Sirius made that protest every time McGonagall cornered him after a prank, regardless of his actual level of involvement, and as such she’d begun interpreting the phrase as an admission of guilt.

“I want both of you in my office immediately!”

By the end of the meeting, Sirius had somehow talked their way into a week of detentions, and Gryffindor had lost 50 points, and Remus just wanted to go back to bed. He might have been able to, if that had been the end of it, but his luck would never allow for his getting off that easily. 

~*~*~*~*~

Remus was in Potions, desperately trying to follow Slughorn’s instructions but not quite getting the same results, when the geese began appearing again. Several cauldrons were knocked over, either by the geese themselves or by the actions of the students now being attacked once more. Remus’ goose landed on the edge of his cauldron and honked in his face as his potion began to tip out onto the floor. He jumped back to get out of the way and tripped over his stool, which led to him falling to the floor in the aisle between desks.

“Oh, come on!” Marlene McKinnon shouted, and Remus looked over to see that she was covered from head to toe in bright pink goo and goose feathers. He scrambled to get up before he could be met with a similar fate, and collided with Sirius in his haste to escape the splash zone.

“I thought Dumbledore got rid of these things?” Sirius said, grabbing hold of Remus and somehow keeping them both upright. Across the room, for the first time in all her years at Hogwarts, Lily’s potion exploded. She yelped, and Remus hoped that she wouldn’t be sent back to the hospital wing for the second time that day. Madam Pomfrey had never had to treat so many students at once; James still hadn’t been treated for his ear, according to the note Lily delivered to Slughorn.

“I suppose that means they can’t be banished,” Remus said, pulling Sirius to the edge of the classroom. Geese were everywhere, and Slughorn seemed at a loss for what to do about them, focusing his attention on vanishing as many of the student potions as he could get near instead. 

Mary MacDonald threw a stunning spell at a goose that had latched onto her robes, and when the goose was successfully knocked unconscious the rest of the class all hurried to cast their own stunning spells at the remaining geese. Remus breathed a sigh of relief as some semblance of peace was restored.

“Well, unfortunately it seems that most of you have lost your potions,” Slughorn said, glancing around the room and trying to put on a show of remaining in control. “We don’t have time to start again, so instead I’ll let you all out early and ask that you write a 12-inch essay on the uses and properties of the bezoar, due Friday.” 

There was a fair bit of grumbling, but the class quickly packed their things and fled the room, leaving Slughorn to deal with the stunned geese. Remus insisted that he and Sirius wait for Lily, and he was glad that the explosion of her potion had only resulted in minor eyebrow damage.

“I swear that thing is trying to kill me,” Lily grumbled as she stormed out of the classroom. “The hell was Potter thinking?”

“Hey, do you think you could tell McGonagall that this was all him?” Sirius asked, “Because I keep telling her Remus and I weren’t involved and she just won’t believe it.”

“I mean,  _ really _ , in what universe does he live in that he thought summoning several hundred geese was a good idea?” Lily went on, ignoring Sirius entirely. “What was even the  _ point _ ?”

“Well, I don’t think he was  _ expecting  _ to get several hundred geese,” Remus said. “But as James is an idiot who doesn’t test anything, he went and got them anyway.”

“But what was he hoping to accomplish?” Lily asked, frowning at Remus. He almost told her, but then it occurred to him that she’d be rather cross with the truth, and he didn’t much fancy being the messenger.

“You should ask James. I didn’t even realize he was planning something until this morning,” Remus said, frowning.

“Well, he'd best hope there’s a way to get rid of them,” Lily said. “I won’t stand for them disrupting our classes for the rest of the year. We’re at N.E.W.T. level now, we can’t afford to miss out on valuable instruction.”

Lily stormed off, and Sirius and Remus looked at each other with uncertainty, wondering how Lily would feel when she found out what the geese were really trying to do.

~*~*~*~*~

The Gryffindor Common room was, so far, a goose free zone. For all that the little beasts could appear out of thin air after being vanished, they seemed to lack the ability to teleport, and so they congregated in the corridor outside the portrait hole, laying in wait for an opportunity to return to the side of whichever poor student they’d latched onto.

Not everyone had a goose, Remus had noticed, and he was immensely jealous of those who didn’t have to deal with targeted harassment from the feathery bastards. Every time he went outside he ended up getting shoved around by the enormous bird that had decided to devote itself to making his life as difficult as humanly possible. James said they were meant to be guides, but Remus didn’t much feel that his goose was leading him anywhere at all. Anytime he went to attend to his prefect duties the thing would honk and bite at him. Madam Pince had banned geese, and by extension the students they followed, from the library after Remus’ goose had nearly knocked a bookcase down while trying to force Remus out of the aisle. 

But there were also times that the goose calmed down and left him alone entirely. During dinner on that first night Remus’ goose had bit and shoved at him until he had scooted so far over on the bench that he was half in Sirius’ lap, and then it had sat calmly and quietly, at least until one of them tried to move. Sometimes Remus wondered if the geese were really just meant to cause as many chaotic, awkward situations as possible, and that whatever soul matching powers James had thought they would have had just been horseshit. It’d be quite the prank if so, Remus had to admit.

James himself was constantly going in and out of the hospital wing, and Lily wasn’t much better off, though her goose hadn’t attempted to chew her ear off. The two of them were spending more time together than ever before though, which meant James was  _ almost _ happy with his plan, when he wasn’t feeling unbearably guilty. He still hadn’t told her what he was trying to do, and Remus  _ refused  _ to do it for him, which meant Lily was slowly growing to be angry with all of them as her frustration at not understanding grew.

There had been very little luck with getting rid of the geese. Banishing them only provided a few hours reprieve, and the time before they reappeared seemed to grow shorter with each vanishing. Students of all ages had grown father adept at stunning charms, but Remus was fairly certain that the geese were growing an immunity to those as well. He tried to teach the younger students a variety of them, but it was by no means a permanent solution.

And then Frank Longbottom asked out one of the seventh year Gryffindors, who Remus was fairly certain was named Alice, and then both of their geese vanished of their own accord. They were bombarded with questions on what they had done, but neither had an answer, because they really hadn’t don’t anything to the geese at all. 

It worried Remus, more than anything. It was possible that the timing was coincidence, but given James’ original purpose, he had a hard time believing that the disappearance of the geese lining up with their getting together was mere chance. It made him wonder if he’d be stuck with a goose forever, because he had no idea what, or who, it might be leading him toward, if it was in fact leading him anywhere at all.

For the moment, however, Remus was content to curl up in one of the large armchairs by the fireplace with his Arithmancy book. He was warm and comfortable, and while his friends were never  _ quiet _ , per say, with James away Peter and Sirius had calmed enough that they were content with playing chess: a game that only ever led to shouting when Sirius was losing, which meant that they were largely quiet enough for Remus to get lost in his book.

The trouble came from the first year who was leaving the common room, who Remus later learned had been highly distraught over something her roommates had said, and in her haste had forgotten about the geese waiting outside the portrait hole, and therefore didn’t call over anyone to help her get out. As such, when the poor girl opened the portrait to run out of the room, she was essentially steamrolled by the hoard of angry geese who’d been separated from their marks.

The chess pieces ran for cover as Sirius’ goose landed on the board so it could bite him on the nose. “Fucking hell!”

Peter scrambled out of the way as Sirius batted at the bird, pushing it away just long enough for him to get off the ground. Remus was so absorbed in watching the struggle that he forgot that he too had a goose, though that was remedied when said bird snatched his textbook and ran away with it.

Remus shifted, truly not in the mood for chasing after a goose, but he needed it to finish his reading before class, so he was left with very little choice. He was just about to stand up when Sirius fell on top of him, having been tripped by his own avian tormentor. “Moony? Have I mentioned to you how much I hate geese?”

“At least four times a day by now,” Remus said, trying to shift Sirius off of him, only to be stopped by the angry honking of Sirius’ goose. He sighed. “How long do you think it’s going to trap us here?”

“I don’t know. Until we stun it, probably,” Sirius said, pulling out his wand and pointing it at the goose. “Stupe—”

Sirius’ wand was snatched out of his hand by another goose, which Remus confirmed as his own after quickly glancing around the room. He wasn’t sure where his textbook had wound up but he hoped it hadn’t been destroyed. The goose dropped Sirius’ wand on the mantle of the fireplace and sat on it.

“I think they’ve started coordinating, Padfoot,” Peter said, safely sitting on the couch, being completely ignored by the various geese that had invaded the common room, something that Remus thought was terribly unfair.

“To what end?” Remus muttered, mostly to himself, but Sirius was close enough that he must have heard anyway. 

“Thank you, Wormy, I hadn’t noticed,” Sirius sneered, though his gaze was locked in a staring contest with his goose. “Now start stunning them, won’t you?”

“But what if they take  _ my _ wand?” Peter protested, eyeing the geese with apprehension. “You should just do what they want, then they’ll go away on their own.”

“And what, exactly, do you think the horde of geese want?” Remus asked, trying to keep his frustration out of his voice. It wasn’t Peter he was angry with, after all.

“A gaggle,” Peter said, shifting uncomfortably. “A group of geese is a gaggle, not a horde.”

“Wormtail, if you’re not going to help, you can get the fuck out!” Sirius snapped, not turning from the goose before him. Peter stood up and started walking to the portrait hole. Sirius must have noticed the movement, because he finally broke away from his staring contest to yell, “That wasn’t an invitation to abandon us!”

Remus dropped his head onto Sirius’ shoulder with a sigh. They were doomed. They were going to spend the rest of their lives stuck in an armchair under the watchful eyes of a gaggle of angry geese.

“Moony, have you got your wand?” Sirius asked, balancing precariously as he tried to appease the goose without crushing Remus.

“It’s on the table,” Remus said, waving his hand in the general direction of the sidetable where he’d set his things without looking up. Sirius shifted again, trying to lean over to the table, and then nearly fell out of the armchair when his goose honked loudly at him. Remus looked up when Sirius grabbed him for stability, and could only watch as the goose knocked the rickety little table over. His wand rolled under the couch, and Remus sighed again as Sirius let out an aggravated groan.

“What do you want from us?” he yelled at the goose, which flared its wings and honked again. “Moony, what do they want from us?”

“I don’t know. James must have mucked something up,” Remus said. “Your knee is digging into my side, budge over.”

Sirius shifted again, leaning away from Remus only to rapidly pull himself back into Remus’ side when the goose ran forward to bite at him. There was more shuffling, and in the end Sirius ended up straddling Remus, which was infinitely worse for very different reasons, and Remus wished he hadn’t said anything at all.

“I thought Prongs said that these things were supposed to be guides?” Sirius grumbled. “I don’t feel very guided.”

“I told you, he must have mucked up the potion,” Remus said, trying to ignore just how close Sirius was by refusing to meet the other boy’s eyes. “I don’t know about yours, but my goose has never led me anywhere.”

“Mines chases me sometimes,” Sirius offered. “Usually just until I run into you though.”

Remus was silent for a moment, thinking over the last few days of goose-based harassment with a new focus. “You’re right. Mine’s been doing that too.”

“Moony?” Sirius asked, something uncertain in his voice that drew his gaze to Sirius’ dark eyes. 

“Yeah, Pads?” Remus’ voice is quiet, barely a whisper because he’s afraid anything louder will shatter whatever atmosphere is forming between them.

“What if…” Sirius bites his lip, more nervous than Remus has ever seen him before. “What if—”

“The cavalry has arrived!” Peter’s voice cuts across the common room, followed by McGonagall uttering a spell that turned the geese into umbrellas. Sirius pulled back so fast he fell out of the armchair, and Remus struggled to regain his composure.

Everyone helped gather the umbrellas, and Remus wondered if this spell might actually stick, or if it was just another temporary reprieve. McGonagall took them away, and the students set about trying to restore order in the common room. Peter chattered away as he helped Remus and Sirius find their stolen possessions, and Remus agonized over what Sirius might have been about to ask.

~*~*~*~*~

The geese didn’t reappear, and Remus learned that the reason why was that Dumbledore and the rest of the staff had gathered them up and sealed them into an empty classroom on the fourth floor, which was now out of bounds to all students, and so far it was containing the geese. James finally managed to be dismissed from the hospital wing, though he now had a strange looking scar behind his right ear.

To no one’s surprise, he still hadn’t gotten a date with Lily Evans. He also didn’t seem to have been deterred at all by the events of the past several days, and Remus was disappointed in himself for ever harboring a hope that James might actually have learned something from the whole disaster. He really ought to know better, after nearly six years of friendship.

But Remus didn’t  _ really _ care about James, in the immediate aftermath of the goose incident. Not when he was remembering Sirius’ almost question, and the way he was biting his lip, or how nice it had been to be so close to him. He couldn’t stop thinking about that “what if”, and what Sirius might have said, if only it’d taken Peter just a few more minutes to find McGonagall. He didn’t know how to ask, and the two of them hadn’t had a moment alone since the geese had been removed from the common room anyway.

Ironically, it wasn’t until their first detention that they had some time to themselves, and as they sat cleaning up scattered goose feathers from McGonagall’s classroom Remus couldn’t decide if he was happy or sad that they were stuck together. On the one hand, they hadn’t done anything to deserve being punished (at least not that week). On the other, they were finally alone, and Remus could theoretically ask what Sirius had been about to say, if only he could figure out the words to do so.

It wasn’t until they were halfway through that Remus finally forced himself to break the silence. “So…”

“So?” Sirius echoed, when Remus had been silent long enough that Sirius knew he was having trouble saying whatever it was he wanted to say.

Remus took a deep breath, and stopped all pretenses of cleaning to look at Sirius. “So, in the common room, you were going to say something.”

“Oh. That.” Sirius looked away, suddenly fascinated by the ceiling. Remus moved closer, because it almost looked like Sirius might be blushing but he couldn’t quite tell from so far away. “I had just, uh, had a thought for getting rid of the geese. But it doesn’t really matter now.”

“Tell me anyway?” Remus asked, now only a few steps away. Sirius was  _ definitely  _ blushing, but he still wasn’t looking at Remus.

“Er…”

“Because I had had a thought about that too,” Remus said, and Sirius  _ finally  _ looked at him, and Remus took another step closer. “And I think that whatever you were going to say may matter quite a lot, Padfoot.”

“I... I was going to say,” Sirius began, “What if Prongs didn’t muck the potion up after all? What if... what if the geese were doing what they were meant to, in their own way?”

“What if they never really led us anywhere because we were always together?” Remus said, his voice soft. Sirius nodded, his eyes wide and hopeful. Remus smiled. “What if we were more than just friends?”

“Can we be?” Sirius whispered. He looked surprised, almost as if he hadn’t meant to say so out loud, and Remus couldn’t resist the urge to kiss him. Sirius reacted instantly, wrapping his arms around Remus’ neck and smiling into the kiss.

McGonagall gave them another detention when she came back and caught them, but neither particularly cared. All that really mattered was that they were together.

~*~*~*~*~

On the fourth floor, in a classroom filled with a rather annoyed gaggle of geese, two birds had just disappeared from their number. No one was there to notice it, though there were two students who could have guessed that it had happened. 


End file.
